***UPDATE: Jason Howerton from The Blaze told The Right Scoop that Patch.com used their report and got the story wrong. He says no guns were actually confiscated by police. He provides a link below to his earlier report at The Blaze:
@trscoop @eileenhart1 here is an actual truthful report. theblaze.com/stories/2013/0…
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) April 9, 2013
***
The son doesn’t even have any type of toy gun, but he threatened to bring either a water gun, a paintball gun, or a bb gun to the house of a kid pushing people around. Instead of just dealing with the kid though for making threats of this nature by involving the parents, the school also contacted the police who then went to the father’s house and revoked his license and took his guns. They told him he can have them back when his kid is 18:
PATCH.COM – A Commack father is pursuing legal action after his pistol license was suspended when his 10-year-old son allegedly talked about using a water gun on classmates who had picked on his friends in school.
John Mayer, who posted his story on LongIslandFireArms.com, said the issue stemmed from a March 1 incident at Pines Elementary in Hauppauge.
According to Mayer, his son spoke with a few of his classmates about a pushing incident on the schoolyard, and although Mayer’s son was not involved in the scuffle, he and two of the other boys talked about bringing a water, paintball and BB gun with them to the house of the classmates that did the pushing. While Mayer’s lawyer said that none of the boys actually have any of the toy guns mentioned, word about the perceived threats got around to the principal, who not only suspended Mayer’s son for two days, but also filed a police report.
“What the school did was atrocious,” Mayer’s lawyer, James Murtha, said. “He’s a good kid, who has been discriminated against severely by the school district.”
According to Mayer’s lawyer, the other two boys involved in the conversation were not suspended.
A spokesperson from the Hauppauge School District said that privacy laws prevent district administrators from talking about the incident. The district released the following statement:
“Please be advised that the Hauppauge Public School District followed appropriate protocols with respect to this matter. The District is guided by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects the privacy of students, and thus cannot provide comment relative to any of its students.”
“If this wasn’t bad enough, the police were sent to my residence and I was advised that my guns may be taken from me. This can’t be happening, I thought. But it was,” Mayer said.
That following Monday, Mayer received a call from the pistol licensing office, stating that police would be at his house to remove his guns and suspend his license.
“I attempted to explain that this must be a mistake, no wrong doing occurred on my part. My son has no access to any of my guns. The officer that came to my residence saw that all my guns were secured. Pistol Licensing was not interested in my side of the story. They were only interested in what happened with my 10-year-old son in school,” he said.
When Mayer asked police when his license would be restored, he said that police told him he would have to wait until his son is 18 years old and moves out of the home. According to police, if Mayer wants his handguns back sooner, he could pursue an administrative hearing or other legal recourse. However, those are pricey endeavors.
“The cost, so far, about $6,500 monetarily. Emotionally, the cost is far, far higher. That can’t be calculated. All my handguns are gone, my license is suspended and my long arms are out of the house waiting to be sold at a local store,” Mayer said.
Murtha said that Suffolk County Police not only hampered Mayer’s rights to have a gun, but also harassed and threatened to embarrass him in front of his neighbors. He also stated that police threatened to interrogate the 10-year-old without Meyer’s permission.
Police said that they could not comment on the specifics of the case due to privacy issues.